Decoding Geopolitics Podcast with Dominik Presl

#114 Janis Kluge: The Biggest Threat to Russian Economy Is Not What You Think

➡️ Buy your own Geopolitics of the Western Pacific Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/ ➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics ➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ The Russian economy is in trouble and the trouble is getting bigger - but its problems are different than what most people imagine them to be. Usually, the arguments tend to be that the Russian economy is either doing fantastic or that it’s about to collapse. In reality it’s none of that, but there is something else that is making the Kremlin worried, that will become a bigger and bigger problem for it to deal with and that will influence all of its decisions - and that could potentially present a problem for the stability and survival of the regime.  I talk about that - and much more, like why the Iran war matters far less for Russia’s economy than most people assume - with Janis Kluge, a foremost European expert on Russian economy and a Senior Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

#113 General H.R. McMaster Warns: The Wars Are Just Getting Started. And Time Is Running Out

➡️ Buy your own Geopolitics of the Western Pacific Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/ ➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics ➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ This is a conversation with General HR McMaster - one of the most experienced, respected and impressive military and national security thinkers and practitioners of our time. He is a military historian, Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, former National Security Advisor to Donald Trump in his first term and a former three star general in the U.S. Army - who among other things commanded US troops during the Gulf War in the biggest tank battle since the 2nd world war and who has been called the “best brigadier general of our time” and “the pre-eminent warrior-thinker of the 21st century”. As we're recording this, the United States and Israel are two weeks into a war with Iran, and the war in Ukraine is still grinding on. And General McMaster has been warning for years that these - and other conflicts - aren't separate crises - but that they're part of one connected, escalating struggle between the West and an axis of authoritarian aggressors. In this conversation, we get into why he thinks the West is dangerously underestimating this threat, what's really driving Putin's strategy and why does Trump keep refusing to increase pressure on him, whether starting a war with Iran war was a good decision and how will it end, whether the West still even exists if U.S. president threatens to take Greenland or why is the momentum of escalating and cascading events only picking up steam - and what comes next.

#112 Nigel Gould-Davies: Something Is Breaking Inside Russia's War Machine - And It's Quickly Getting Worse

➡️ Buy your own Geopolitics of the Western Pacific Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/ ➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics ➡️ Take a look at Nigel's IISS analysis here: https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2026/02/russiaukraine-war-escalation-not-stalemate ➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ For a long time, the war in Ukraine resembled a bit of a stalemate. Russia gradually pushed into Ukrainian territory, Ukraine fought back and Russia, although suffering great costs, managed to keep going. But that is now changing - as the dynamics of the war are undergoing major shifts - and as those shifts are quickly picking up pace. Ukraine has a new strategy to win the war. The gradual Russian push has been slowed to a halt and Ukraine has increasingly been able to go on the offensive, capturing lost territory and pushing back Russian forces. And Russia is increasingly struggling with something that was never really expected to become a major issue - and it’s getting so bad that it’s quickly approaching an inflection point where something will have to break - one way or another. I talk about all that - and much more - with my guest, Nigel Gould Davis, a Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

#111 Mujtaba Rahman: Why Iran War Exposed Europe’s Biggest Weakness

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics ➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ This is a conversation with Mujtaba Rahman, Managing Director of Eurasia Group Europe and an insider and one of my go to sources on European politics. It has been a very dramatic year for Europe and it only seems to get more dramatic - and so we go through how has Europe been holding so far and where are we gonna go from here.  We talk about the U.S. war with Iran - specifically about the chaotic European reaction to it and how that has shown how much Europe is still lacking any common unified foreign policy or about why are European powers willing to shoot down Iranian drones in the Gulf but not in Western Ukraine. And why Mujtaba believes that Greenland is still a major underpriced risk and why crisis over Greenland might have only paused and restart at any point. About Friedrich Merz in the White House and whether European unity towards Trump has started to fall apart - and much more.

#110 Jeremy Schapiro: The Real Reason Why Trump Attacked Iran - And Why It Won’t End Well

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics ➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ This is a conversation with Jeremy Schapiro - the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, focused on US foreign policy. We talk about one thing - Trump’s war in Iran - one of the biggest US military operations in two past two decades which - the longer it goes on and the more we find out about it - seems to get more and more confusing. We talk about what was the primary reason to start the war and why now and how to make sense of the variety of contradicting reasons that Trump and his team gave on this and about the equally confusing war aims of this operation and whether this is a regime change or not . About whether the U.S. was just following Israel in its decision and if that’s the case why, what are the chances of success of this operation and what does success actually mean, or whether Trump will now seek to de-escalate and retreat or whether he will double down - and much more.